Tag Archives: band candy

Boy, the folks running the OMEA are damned efficient! Compare the background of yesterday’s strip to today’s. They’ve managed to put up a huge number of booths and banners in a matter of seconds! Yesterday’s box of crap at the far right has been expanded into a nicely arranged table. Talk about can-do! Imagine how many band mattresses those guys could sell. Probably hundreds in just an hour. Oh, wait–they’d have to sell them in Westview, wouldn’t they. Well, they could probably sell at least one, right? And maybe come back alive, most of them? Sorry for sending you guys into that city–and I already knew it was infested with zombies, too. My bad, guys. Oops. Won’t happen again, you have my word.

On the other hand, this conference has been going on for several days, and they’re only just now getting around to setting up these booths. (Perhaps one of these booths was the one that had pizza! Mystery solved.) Okay, so…they’re very efficient once they start, but also lazy and unmotivated to start on their own. Well, no one will ever fault this strip for being too consistent.

As for this stupid app, weren’t they championing something similar a few years ago that could keep track of trombone sections? Yesterday they were dismissive of this thing, but throw in candy sales and their eyes goggle. Becky even gets to shove her pinned sleeve into frame, she’s so excited.

*Shrug.* As mentioned, no one will ever fault this strip for being too consistent. “Hey, Batiuk, loosen up! You don’t have to remember all the details, like things that have already happened, last names, and stuff like that. It makes you look like a beady-eyed nitpicker. You don’t want to look like a beady-eyed nitpicker, do you? No one gives awards for that.”

As February dawns, the first strip of the month is not available for preview, but let’s be honest–Batiuk’s not going to cut away to something different, not when he’s got Dinkle to shove in people’s faces. Those seemingly endless weeks where he craps out those terrible, terrible Claude Barlow witlessisms should be proof of that.

Yesterday, he wailed and moaned that he couldn’t find free food. What could it be today? Perhaps…his ass, with both hands?

I wonder if Beck will get any lines…so far, she’s only spoken on Sunday, and it was, of course, nothing but praise for Dinkle. So, she’s really already played her part. All that’s left is a praise reprise.

(GAH, sorry folks, that was almost Batiukian…surprising how easily one slips back into this stuff…)

That’s right Becky, let’s not go around patting YOU on the back for merely using Harry’s band candy fund raising idea, YOU just did the work and put in the effort. Dinkle is, as always, the real hero here, as he used to be “wacky and zany” a long, long time ago. Remember? Huh? Well do ya?

Still though, it isn’t his worst gag ever, although there’s no way this is the first time he’s used this joke. As irritating as Dinkle is this is just your typical end-of-year FW fare, filler material he used to check off those last few weeks back when he was stuffing 2018 into the big self-addressed envelope The Syndicate provided for that purpose. Even he gets visibly tired of Becky after two or three days of her one-armed moping. The new guy did do a fine job with her pinned-up sleeves this week though, he got the folds exactly right. Kudos to him.

Well, at least that highly disturbing Morty and Holly’s mom arc appears to be over, thank God. This week we’re switching gears and visiting good old Westview High to see what the good old Scapegoats band is up to during this, the most holiest of all seasons. And, to no one’s surprise at all, everything is still exactly the same. Beleaguered and perpetually harried band director Becky still has one arm and still relies heavily on her predecessor, who “retired” eleven or fifteen or seventeen or twenty years ago (no one is really sure) for basic teaching advice.

At this point I am contractually obligated to point out yet again that if BatDolt hadn’t ruined the Dinkle character by using him to generate totally unnecessary Dinkle pathos where none was needed or wanted, he’d still be able to do Dinkle-style band gags without finding a way to work that miserable one-armed woman into the strip. It’s kind of weird how he kept her around to have a disabled person presence in the strip yet she’s by far one of the most hapless and helpless characters in it, which IMO kind of belies the whole point. But hey, it’s only Monday, maybe (sigh) this time will be different.

Dinkle appears in today’s strip.
No “spoiler alert” tag… this is not a spoiler, it is a warning. You have been warned. Read at your own risk. Or don’t, your life will be better off.

You know what, I’m going to focus on just one small little part of this strip and let our great commenters take the rest of it apart. I’m going to deal only with the first four words that appear in the strip, “Speaking of band candy”.

“SPEAKING OF BAND CANDY”?!
NO ONE was speaking of band candy! No one other than Dinkle is ever speaking of band candy! No one in their right mind wants to speak of band candy! I suppose Dinkle is correct in “saying “speaking of band candy” because that is a 100% accurate description of what he proceeds to do… thus, he most assuredly wanders around uttering “speaking of band candy” whenever he wants to speak of band candy. There is no other possible explanation. I’m typing “speaking of band candy” over and over again in desperate hope that this will be last time those words are ever written. Please. Please.

So Dinkle has a basement full of unsold band candy… but just last year he was flown to Belgium and received an award for being the Van Houten chocolate company’s all-time biggest purchaser. That might seem odd, but I’ve actually seen something similar before. I believe the prosecutor called it “money laundering”.

If yesterday’s strip depicting Mort and his walker (hey! Mort Walker!) going door to door to sell candy yesterday was not heartbreaking enough, here’s poor Carl pushing around his oxygen tank. Anyone opening their door to this sight would be overcome pity, but this Westview resident is fed up after years of Dinkle’s interminable fundraisers and decides she’s gonna take it out on Carl. “Whopperjawed” sounded to me like some kind of Willy Wonka reference (think “everlasting gobstopper“), but according to Google it’s a word meaning “crooked or askew”. Between the nonsensical punchline and the cruelty of sending nursing home residents out to hawk candy, this is FW at its unfunniest.